Berkeley activists still occasionally protest against poor nuclear waste management....

Are you in the contingent that wants to declare the Bevatron a historical landmark? Or do you want them to carry it away in a safer manner.
If it is a landmark, would there be people working in offices or doing science in there, or would it be an empty building?

UC certainly inherited a lot of toxic problems by being given land at the Richmond field station there they had previously had a battery factory or gunpowder factory. The tideland there is really low pH and has strange colors. The people nearby tend to get cancer

So, UC Berkeley has a pretty rigorous inspection policy and guidelines for acquisition and disposal of chemicals. For example, there are inspections by OSHA in the labs all the time, and if a scientist in the chemistry department was tempted to quietly pour a bottle of phenol or ethanol down the drain to avoid the expensive disposal fee- there are automatic sensors in the system which detect chemicals passing through and will send the EHS back to their lab.
With medical labs using small microcurie amounts of radioactive substances in imaging or genetics, there are very strong precautions. Technicians must perform tests over the whole lab area to make sure there was no accidental spill of any droplets.

Now, are you guys saying that somehow the dismantling of the bevatron happens to fall outside of the rather stringent EHS, and somehow it just falls under the jurisdiction of possibly callous construction companies that will haul stuff around without precautions? it could be true, but it would be really shocking, given the stringency on the other side. It just is a sort of cognitive dissonance involved there

Here is an example of someone getting caught pouring a substance of medium-low toxicity down the drain. Part of the tension is that the price of proper disposal can be thousands of dollars, so researchers with low funding are commonly suspected to break the rules. It is hard to know how often lab workers might try to avoid $15,000 disposal fees via even worse methods, such as carrying it outside of the university.
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/306457_dump08.html
Professor pleads guilty to dumping chemical
UW researcher put solvent down sink to avoid paying fee

By CHRISTINE FREY
P-I REPORTER

When Daniel R. Storm, a University of Washington professor whose work includes studying the brain, found out that getting rid of potentially dangerous chemicals in his lab would cost $15,000, he decided to find a cheaper way.

Storm, a professor in the Department of Pharmacology, dumped ethyl ether down the sink.

On Wednesday, Storm, 62, pleaded guilty in federal court in Seattle to pouring the ethyl ether, which can explode or catch fire if handled improperly, down the laboratory sink in June 2006. Prosecutors say Storm then tried to cover up his actions.

He could face up to five years in prison and a fine of $250,000 for knowingly disposing of a hazardous waste without a permit. But prosecutors are recommending probation, said Emily Langlie, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Seattle.

When the UW's Environmental Health and Safety Department told Storm that it would cost $15,000 to dispose of the solvent, he broke three metal containers with an ax and poured the liquid down the sink in his lab. He also disposed of an ethyl ether and water mixture in two glass bottles.

Storm then poured water and an ethanol solution down the drain to dilute the solvent, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

He admitted that he did not want to pay for the disposal from his laboratory account. The liquid was not used in his research, but was found in his lab.

Ethyl ether has a flammability rating of 4 -- meaning it is an "extreme fire hazard" -- according to the National Fire Protection Association. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration advises that only people in protective gear clean up spills of ethyl ether.

The Environmental Health and Safety Department discovered the containers of ethyl ether and told Storm that an outside agency would have to dispose of them, said Tina Mankowski, associate vice president for medical affairs at the UW. When health and safety workers made a follow-up visit to the lab, they discovered that the solvent was gone.

The UW typically contracts with a group that can safely remove such materials after hours, when people are not in the labs, she said.

She said that what happened in Storm's lab is rare.

"I've not heard that it's a problem," Mankowski said. "I think our environment health and safety is really on top."

Storm's lawyer, John Wolfe, said that Storm acknowledged that he acted improperly and is trying to rectify the matter by pleading guilty to the dumping charge and working with the university.

"He accepts full responsibility for this," Wolfe said.

A disciplinary review is under way, Mankowski said. None of Storm's teaching or research duties have been suspended.

Storm joined the UW in 1978, according to an online biography. His lab research involves memory and the brain.

He will be sentenced June 18.

oops. Meant to add this, which details UC Berkeley hazardous waste disposal procedures

http://ehs.berkeley.edu/index.html

Here they outline radiation safety.
http://ehs.berkeley.edu/radsafety.html

Darin wrote;

"Also difficult is the idea that tons of radioactive material is being dispersed into the atmosphere as it is being trucked to a toxic waste dump somewhere in Nevada."

Also difficult is wondering what in the hell the people of Nevada have done to deserve being the dumping ground for CA's nuclear waste? Is it the casinos? The legalization of prostitution? Why on Earth is Nevada always the shitbucket for CA's (or any other state for that matter) nuclear waste?

Don't even try bringing nuclear waste trucks from Berkeley into Nevada, we'll send it right back over the hills for CA to deal with. Guess it is ok for CA to have nuclear energy for electricity there so long as another less fortunate state bears the burden of nuclear waste disposal. Keep CA's nuclear waste on the west side of the Sierras please!!

Regarding the pending closure of Yucca Mt. nuclear waste storage site, since Obama's administration is lollygagging on their promises of closing the site, Clark County has decided on a scientific study to show that the Yucca storage site is unsafe for radioactive material. We cannot rely on the federal government to follow through with their promises to be safe, so once again the local people need to take matters into their own hands..

"Road study commissioned, just in case
Commission to argue that transportation to nuclear dump threatens public."

By Joe Schoenmann (contact)

Sunday, July 12, 2009

"The new administration in Washington has assured Nevadans that they can relax — the unopened nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain will stay that way.

President Barack Obama has moved to cut the project’s funding, which had risen to about $10 billion since Congress selected the site in 1987.

Still, the Energy Department filed a license application for the project in June 2008.

So despite the assurances of Yucca Mountain’s demise, local officials say the fight continues until the place is turned into a museum or is sealed altogether.

To that end, the Clark County Commission last week approved a multi-faceted study of transportation safety in Clark County. Funding for the first year of the study, costing $200,000, will come from the Energy Department.

The repository is designed to hold 77,000 tons of waste that would be trucked and hauled in by rail — with many shipments traveling through the heart of Las Vegas — from 121 sites across the United States. The concern locally focuses on potential accidents and spills."

article found @;
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/jul/12/road-study-commissioned-just-case/

See, this is the real reason that nuclear energy is not desireable for anyone, there is NO SAFE PLACE FOR NUCLEAR WASTE!!